Dionne Warwick is still reeling about the disparaging accusations that came forth in a Whitney Houston documentary last year. The legendary singer revealed that she will never excuse the claims made by Houston’s former assistant Mary Jones that the pop icon was molested by her sister, Dee Dee Warwick.
“All I can say about Dee Dee is that she was a loving, caring, giving person,” Warwick told People magazine about her late sister, who died in 2008. “What was depicted of her is absolutely untrue and something I will never forgive.”
After Kevin Macdonald’s documentary, Whitney, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Whitney’s mother, Cissy Houston, issued a statement also on behalf of Dionne, which said that Dee Dee had been unfairly charged.
“We cannot reconcile the public’s need to know about Whitney’s life as justification for invasion of her privacy or the charge against Dee Dee, a charge which neither Whitney nor Dee Dee is here to deny, refute or affirm,” it read. “Neither I, Dionne, nor my son Michael who was very close to his sister, and in the film is VERY candid about their drug use, has ever heard these allegations; we have never heard anything remotely connected to the crimes charged against Dee Dee in the film.”
Macdonald claimed that two weeks before finishing an edit on the film, he was able to get Jones on record, detailing Houston’s alleged abuse. It came after Houston’s brother Gary Garland Houston revealed he was molested.
“I finally managed to persuade Mary Jones, who was Whitney’s longtime assistant and probably knew her in her last years more than anybody, to talk [on camera],” Macdonald told Vanity Fair last May. “She talks about what Whitney felt and what effect it had on her. So we changed the whole cut at the very last minute. It was kind of a detective story to get that piece of information, which changed how I felt about Whitney and how I felt about the story.”
Dionne and Dee Dee were not only sisters, but also formed the group The Gospelaires in 1957. Their mother, Lee Drinkard, was a member of the gospel act The Drinkard Sisters, along with her younger sister, Cissy Houston.
With her breakout solo hits such as “Walk On By,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “I Say A Little Prayer,” Dionne became a superstar in the 1960s and paved the path for her young cousin Houston, who died in 2012, to achieve astronomical success during the 1980s and beyond. The pair recorded the duet, “Love Will Find a Way”on Warwick’s 1993 album Friends Can Be Lovers.